Astromech Droid Pack Series II - TSC - Exclusives

The behind-the-scenes workers of the Old Republic, the New Order and the Rebellion, these astromech droids have all played their part in assisting smugglers, bounty hunters, heroes and villains throughout the galaxy!

The Entertainment Earth exclusive Astromech Droid Pack Series I and Astromech Droid Pack Series II sets were ultimately very well-received. They didn’t resonate with collectors like their previous clone trooper multipacks did, but they were successful and introduced the collecting community to never before released astromech droids that we may have not received any other way were it not for these sets. Astromech Droid Pack Series II might be considered the “less interesting” of the two. There is a blatant coloring error on one figure and another droid’s owner is BoShek. Most collectors didn’t want BoShek, so do you think that they’re going to want his astromech droid? Aside from these setbacks, The Phantom Menace droids are especially engaging and the astromech from The Empire Strikes Back is pretty cool, of the coloring is correct, but that has been the topic of debate for quite some time and something we’re not going to spend time arguing here in this review. (In short, some people say that R3-Y2 is not olive green and perhaps even an orange color instead. We are now moving away from this.) The Astromech Droid Pack Series II knocks five more figures off of your wish list and for the most part you should be very happy with the final production figures. They are definitely done well, even the inferior sculpts.

So you know about BoShek’s astromech R4-E1 already. To be fair, the droid is cool, but we just don’t know how many collectors really ever wanted to see this figure. What do we know? We certainly can’t speak for everyone. R3-Y2 looks very nice if you don’t take exception with its coloring. (We’re sort of convinced this droid is olive green for the record.) But both R4-E1 and R3-Y2 utilized “old” sculpts of their respective astromech series and we have to admit they look dated next to the more modern sculpted droids. It’s great to get another Mos Eisley droid and collectors are probably even more thrilled to get another Echo Base astromech droid. We suppose its better to have them with inferior sculpting than not at all, but we would like to see Hasbro upgrade them down the road with updated tooling. The paint jobs overall are very well done, but there are a few issues here and there like the figures has leaned against something hot and has sustained some melting injury. it’s the weirdest thing we have ever seen on an action figure and haven’t seen it before or since this release. When you are dealing with multipacks are you are obsessed with perfect paint jobs, it’s almost impossible to find one with five perfect specimens. This is why we prefer basic figures to multipacks.

There are two incredible astromechs from The Phantom Menace here. We get the very long-awaited R2-A6, a figure that was released as one of the first 12” scaled figures in the Episode I line of 1999 without a 3.75” scaled counterpart until now. This action figure is excellent and it’s so incredible to finally get this droid after so long. The wait was torturous. This was one of the wisest choices in both of these sets. R2-M5 is another great astromech in this set. Another figure that people have debated its color incessantly, we think it looks close enough to be considered accurate enough. Both of these droids help complete a very long line of Episode I specific astromechs fans want to see realized in plastic. So what about that incorrectly colored astromech droid? R2-X2 is not black. The droid is very dark green and this is easily seen in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. We are fortunate enough to see this droids full body enter the droid socket of an X-wing fighter and there is no mistaking its color. (Editor’s Note: Hasbro fixed this figure and released it in 2009’s Legacy Collection as BD52 and the coloring was perfect this time.) The Astromech Droid Packs Series I and Astromech Droid Packs Series II sets are must-haves for your collection. That’s about all we can say about them, even despite their flaws.